Ironically, even though they were both employed, they were worse off than their neighbors, most of whom were being subsidized by some kind of government program, many of them fraudulently. She knew for a fact that many couples got married in a religious ceremony but didn’t register their marriages with the government so they could apply for rent and food subsidies as unwed mothers. With the government paying their mortgages, some even purchased second homes that they rented out. Honestly, she couldn’t get her head around this kind of dishonesty among so-called God-fearing people. Religious law demanded that Jews strictly keep the secular laws in every country they lived if such laws didn’t contradict the Torah. These kind of unethical shenanigans were strictly forbidden: Chuka d’medina Chuka. The law of the land was also the law under halacha.

But there was the law, and then there was how people actually lived. The more she lived in Boro Park, the more she understood how wide the gap was between the two. It was very disappointing. And as a result, honest, hardworking people like themselves were often not better off financially than those who were learning full-time.

Of course, Yaakov’s salary would increase as he added experience to his résumé, and her business was growing month by month according to the hours she was able to devote to it. And truthfully, she’d learned to care less about material things. It helped that she’d grown up with an unwed mother, and fairly poor. You could get your clothes in Goodwill, take the kids to all kinds of free museums and parks, buy generic food in bulk. People in Boro Park were the hands-down champions of living on the cheap, making her mother look like a rank amateur! And she’d learned from them.

“No, being poor isn’t the end of the world, HaShem, and I guess this is more or less what I expected when I married a debt-laden, widowed Torah scholar. But the loneliness! The number of hours I’m here in this apartment on my own, or just with the children! Well, HaShem, it surprises me. I thought there would be more us.”

She hesitated. Could she do it? Talk to the Holy One Blessed Be He, Master of the Universe, like one of her girlfriends? Repeat all those things she’d discussed with Shoshana? Was she really going to entreat Him to help her overcome her revulsion to one of His commandments? She swallowed hard. How could she tempt making the God she loved, Who had given her so much happiness, angry? How could she bear to disappoint Him? Worse, would He find it sacrilegious, offensive? These were, after all, His laws. Or so she had been led to believe. He must have a reason. What could she say? And then the words came to her.